Dig Day 2

Day 2 did not go very well from my perspective. Liz, one of the coordinators, told me not to share this with my family, but they don't read this post so it is okay. I'm also a firm believer that not everything on social media should be positive.


There have been some logistical challenges with getting started. Probably nothing out of the ordinary, but when you are hungry, tired, and away from home they seem insurmountable. As I was sitting in the dig site this morning in tears (literally) all I could think about was how much would it cost to fly home tomorrow and how would I get to the airport. 

Glinda, our new bearded dragon, is very sick. Don took her to the super vet (NorthStar) the day after I left for Israel because she looked dead. She looked fine the day I left. She got a clean bill of health from her primary care vet a few days earlier (though her bloodwork had not yet come back). Lots of mixed diagnoses (too much calcium? too little calcium?), and two nights staying over, she was sent home with instructions and a lot of meds, including one that has to be injected into her scrawny little arms. She goes back for a check up tomorrow. (Update: she is doing a lot better, not 100%, but heading in that direction.)

After a long pep talk from Liz, she sent me back to get some much-needed rest. Our days are long, and physical. I hadn't appreciated how long our nights would be, too. 

Sleeping has been a mess. My roommate wants the room at arctic temps, which has me sleeping in flannel PJs, socks, a blanket and my fleece jacket in the Mediterranean. We first solved the problem by switching sides of the room (one side feels colder than the other because the air blows on it). The the last two weeks she bumped up the heat and I could finally sleep without my flannel jacket on. 

Breakfast food has been a pastry at 4:30 AM. Breakfast #2 comes at 9 or 9:30 AM. That is a lot of manual labor before getting some protein. Liz took a few of us grocery shopping so I have more than the granola bars I brought with me

from New Jersey (I brought one a day). Now I have some expensive peanut butter, almonds, and I've been encouraged to take fruit and extra food from the cafeteria.

Meals are Kosher meals prepared by Arabs. Lunch at 1:30 is the highlight of the day because it is the meat meal. It is also the one everyone eats feeling super grimy from being at the dig site. By meat or dairy meal I mean 90% of each meal is meat or dairy. When it is meat, we have up to five different kinds of meat, a veggie, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. When it is dairy, it is five different kinds of cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, cole slaw, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I get Kosher, I just expected more vegetables.

Back to the dig. The instructions were to use a giant hoe (called a tureen) and a large pick ax to go down about 10 cm (the size of an average finger) to quickly chip away at the top layer. We are starting about waist deep in the site. The goal is to go down 3,300 years to the 9th century BCE (the time of King David, unless he was the 7th century BCE). They don't car about the coop 7th century BCE pottery we are finding (okay, they care, but they really want to cover new ground, mostly the 9th century BCE since the 8th century BCE seems to be missing and is an historical mystery).

To that extent, today we literally dumped many pottery sherds found three years ago that had been cataloged and studied. Presumably the same will be done with this season's finds. It is fun to find bits of pottery, and exciting to put the find in the bucket, but then someone else has to clean it and put an itsy bitsy labeled number on it. I have not found any pottery since I was put on clean up duty working with the smaller tools. Wishing I worked out extensively before my trip building up my upper body strength. I cannot lift the big tools everyone else wields effortlessly.

For a while I switched to hauling out buckets of dirt in a wheelbarrow to dump on the side of the tell. I must have done that for about 90 minutes before someone realized it was way too long and I was in tired tears. After a long chat with Liz, I was switched to brushing off the rocks until second breakfast. I was also put in charge of setting up for the breakfast (hostessing duties such as putting spoons in PB jars and making a solid traffic flow). Each day they think of something that would make this better -- Clorex wipes to make the tables look like something you could set food on. They'll figure it all out by the end of July when we are heading back on the plane. Second breakfast had milk in bags, but no containers to keep the milk upright. Cottage cheese was also in a bag, but no bowl or spoon for serving.

Yes, my daily "you'd think they never did this before" internal conversation. Likewise with asking for a clothesline to dry our clothes (we already had clothespins and detergent, but no place to hang our laundry). We only brought limited clothing, and that was getting filthy each day.

In the beginning we were told there would be a third breakfast (of just fruit) then told that was only a first day treat. Later we held the fruit back to serve at noon.

I was sent home after second breakfast (about two hours early) to recharge. I took a nap with a temperature I like. It wasn't long enough, but it helped. The meat meal and trip to the grocery store helped, too. Asking too much to have a variety of veggies (so far mostly cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers, though there were green beans at lunch).

These are the little frustrations you don't hear about until you are on the other side of the world feeling separate from all you love. 

Pray for me to find the strength to continue.